The Planet Is Fine
I love those random conversations with strangers in which you feel tightly, yet temporarily connected to this other person somehow. Or, barring the sensation of a personal connection, I love having a random conversation with a stranger in which it seems that one or the other of you (or both) is passing on some kind of clue.
And as I get older, I find myself having random clue-like conversations with strangers in which our bizarre exchange indicates to me that this very intimate spiritual and philosophical spiral path I've been traveling IS relevant and meaningful, at least for me and the occasional random stranger.
I saw M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening at the theater the other night. (Parenthetical snatch* -- I forget how much better movies are in the theater on the big screen. DVDs are convenient, cheap and fabulous for lazy entertainment and escapism, but you really end up missing something in the transition to the small screen.) Anyway, I recommend The Happening, but I'm not really going to tell you about it because you know how you just have to see his movies and let them unfold to really enjoy them. Also, the theater where I saw it was crowded and about one third of the audience seemed to really enjoy it and two-thirds were pissed, saying things like, remind me never to see another M. Night Shyamalan movie. In other words, he didn't necessarily tailor this to soothe the fears and meet the expectations of the status quo.So when the movie ended, my friend and I did the post-movie meaningful look that says, Whoa, good, I think. Need a minute. And the lady in her early sixties with fabulous earrings and a very sharp gauze pantsuit (confession: sometimes I'm into certain kinds of clothes and accessories) on the other side of my friend also gets in the post-movie glance interchange with us. And she and I start chatting while waiting for the grumbling crowd to pass.
Random Stranger Lady (RSL): Well, I really enjoyed that!
La Sirena (LS) and Friend: Me, too! (he owes me a coke)
RSL: You know, lots of people have been saying things like that, that plants are interactive and you should talk to them, like... (lots of people are walking by and complaining here so I don't catch the first five names she rattles off)...and George Washington Carver. You know, and I think I would hate people if I were a plant. We deserve everything we get and then some!
LS: You know what George Carlin said about the earth, that she's just going to--
LS and RSL: (in perfectly metered unison)-- shake us off like a bunch of fleas!!! (The women laugh while the passing 20-something hipster doofi fire them looks of annoyed confusion.)
And so this is my roundabout way of saying goodbye to George Carlin and here is the full text of the Carlin bit from which the aforementioned quote came.
Goodbye, George -- or is it, really? Perhaps you've just attached yourself to another valence?
* Wouldn't "Parenthetical Snatch" be a great name for a band?
6 comments:
I was forwarded something like this, an open letter from the planet- don't worry about me, I'll be fine! I had an intense waking memory of sorts involving Ketamine in India a long while back telling me the earth had raised civilization to this state of complexity and shook it off without a trace many, many times before
Hello Mr. Bones,
Yeah, I think you were probably onto something with that waking memory ... lots of myths and wisps of history to corroborate that too.
Last night, I was all insomniac and mulling things over and smoking cigarettes on the porch and I remembered that energy cannot be created or destroyed and realized that if this incarnation of humanity destroys itself, it really only destroys its form. I don't think you can completely destroy your essence -- transform it into something unrecognizable, maybe -- but never really destroy it.
That seemed right and soothing, somehow...
But what the hell do I know?
Scott Lame here! The boss jock from the boss town with the boss list of the boss songs that my boss told me to play! Right here on the nifty 850, W-I-N-0!
Inspired me to get into radio and stay there.
Thanks George. Who I met once, btw, and he was pretty cool. We talked radio. I think he enjoyed reminiscing....
Lucky you, meeting George Carlin at station WINO!!!
Very cool...
I refuse to believe that he is dead.
he just went off somewhere with John F. Kennedy Jr
and the Gershwins and
Tupac
(my kids are sad)
Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod. -- Aristophenes
Hey Changa ... I know how your kids feel.
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